Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Whenever we see success in sport the needling question at the back of our minds is always: ‘Were drugs involved?’ Christine Ohuruogu took the gold medal in Beijing, and the first question that was asked to her freshly smiling face was about her past trouble with drugs test. It is not fair to chastise athletes with something they have not even been proved to have done. In court the defendant is said to be innocent unless proven guilty, and this concept is being surpassed in a quick momentary judgement.

Usain Bolt. One man who has changed the face of sport ever since he first stepped on the athletics track and started breaking records. He is the fastest man ever and yet his lifestyle consists of chicken nuggets and practical jokes. He is the ideal of what we wish of ourselves: athletic, strong, but laidback and relaxed. It is not uncommon to hear a commentator muse on the idea if there will ever be anyone as quick again. Scientists have even tried to calculate the probabilities of natural selection ever reaching this pinnacle. Although they forget the products of the unnatural; steroids. If they were introduced it would lead to a new era of the super sportsman. I am referring to the idea that we take a leaf out of bodybuilding; we have two categories; the steroid and the clean category. It would allow for mankind to reach the unreachable. Athletes would no longer take steroids just in case the man in the lane either side of him might be as well, but they would take them out of choice to further our need to explore the limit of mankind. Clean athletes would be just as respected, if not more and may even prove to out-perform the athletes who take the steroids. In fact it is not clear whether anyone with steroids could catch Usain Bolt. Athletes could also be further educated about their effect and less harm could come to them as a result.

With all of the positive aspects for the progress of sport, and Man’s lust for the best, there is always the negative which would be much closer to the health of the athletes; as an overdose of steroids due to competitive pressure could only be a result with steroids being legal in sport. Psychologically also, as athletes could be pushed to steroids and not perform with the enhancers leaving them somewhere imbetween, and as often for athletes training is their lives, this introduction would lose athletes in the cracks. There would also be the question of whether every sport should have two teams that play the same competition but in slightly different conditions. This could lead to an overload of sport to the fans of the game and a decrease in quality, just as happened with the many forms of cricket that have exploded onto the scene since tweny twenty’s arrival. Fans could turn there heads away from that aspect of the game or just ignore certain aspects of it altogether leaving a few purists behind and a general hummum of people who just come the day after the wins and the glory days, which would lead to a lingering death if it turns out to be a novelty and the steroid fuelled league would disappear, and be replaced by a fear of it ever happening again and we would no longer ask the question: ‘Were drugs involved,’ as we would know.